Our Whole Foundation Cracks

A few nights ago I finally told my sister that I’m planning to start testosterone in a couple of months. I had predicted that her response might be surprise, or confusion, or neutral acceptance, or even a gentle “I’ve suspected for a while, I’m glad you finally told me.” But what she actually said caught me totally off guard: “Wow, that’s so exciting!!!” She seemed genuinely enthusiastic and excited about me starting testosterone. Of course, it was a huge relief to know that she’s supportive and I felt a surge of gratitude. But her excitement on my behalf also served as an uncomfortable reminder of my own lack of excitement at the prospect of starting testosterone.

For me, starting testosterone is no more exciting than starting an antidepressant: it’s just a pharmaceutical treatment, with no guarantee of benefit, aimed at managing a disorder that I wish I didn’t have. Except that with testosterone, unlike most other medications, the effects are systemic, irreversible, and impossible to hide past a certain point.

My sister also commented, “I am a bit surprised… all this time I just assumed that you were a girl who liked short hair and wore boys’ clothes.” I told her how badly I wish that was the case, how badly I wish that I could just be comfortable living in a female body. I don’t think that desire represents internalized transphobia. No, it’s just a painful recognition that it would be so much easier, so much less confusing, so much less distressing for me to feel comfortable in the body I already have.

It is not my intention to pathologize or medicalize gender dysphoria, which for most trans people seems to be a matter of identity rather than a “diagnosis” or a “disorder”. So I am speaking only for myself here. But I have ransacked every crack and crevice of my brain, searching desperately for any hint of “gender identity” – searching for something that would resemble what others have described as a “feeling” or “internal sense” of “being male” or “being female” or even being somewhere in between – and I have been unable to find anything like that.

In fact, I have no clear understanding of self-identity even beyond gender. I have no internal sense of “being me”. I – well I think we, as humans – are constantly changing and evolving as a result of gaining self-awareness, acquiring knowledge, and adapting to the influence of other people and external circumstances. Amidst this constant chaos, I cannot isolate a stable “identity” for myself. I simply recognize patterns in my thoughts, behaviors, and preferences, some of which have remained relatively stable over time and some of which seem to shift and change as easily and as often as sand dunes in a desert. Across this ever-changing landscape, I have a hard time understanding who or what I am. Perhaps, with time and further exploration, I might find out who I am. Or perhaps I will just learn to live with the uncertainty.

“[We are] incapable of certain knowledge or absolute ignorance. We are floating in a medium of vast extent, always drifting uncertainly, blown to and fro; whenever we think we have a fixed point to which we can cling and make fast, it shifts and leaves us behind; if we follow it, it eludes our grasp, slips away, and flees eternally before us. Nothing stands still for us. This is our natural state and yet the state most contrary to our inclinations. We burn with desire to find a firm footing, an ultimate, lasting base on which to build a tower rising up to infinity, but our whole foundation cracks.”– Blaise Pascal (Pensées, 1688 – english translation)